Voices of Experience: Dorothy Price Hill

For our Voices of Experience series, The Glass Hammer interviewed Dorothy Price Hill and asked her about her experience in private equity and her advice for young women in finance who might be interested in pursuing a similar career path.

Ms. Hill is the Director of Investor Relations and Business Development at a New York-based private equity investment firm specializing in buyouts and buildups of business services companies at the lower end of the U.S. middle market. She has a 14-year record of accomplishment in alternative investments and investment banking, including experience in private equity, hedge funds, risk management, investor relations and capital markets.

Prior to her current role, Dorothy worked for Capital Dynamics, Deutsche Bank, McKinsey, Siemens and the Council on Foreign Relations. In the 1990’s, she spent six years overseas with Goldman Sachs during the firm’s major international expansion and completed assignments in Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and France working with corporate and high net worth clients.

Ms. Hill holds an M.B.A degree from the NYU’s Stern School of Business and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. She is a guest lecturer at the Stern School of Business; serves as co-head of the New York City chapter of 85 Broads, the Goldman Sachs alumnae network and does annual fundraising for Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, among other organizations.

How did you get started in financial services?

I became interested in financial services after meeting several financial-firm CEOs in my first post-college job at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. There, I had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 CEOs, leaders of non-profit organizations, and other world leaders and prominent academics.

Please tell us how a past success – or failure – has helped you learn and grow.

While I’ve been lucky to work for some great firms in positions of increasing responsibility, my career path has not always been smooth. I once worked for an organization led by a highly-experienced financial professional who was borderline abusive to his colleagues, and while it wasn’t fun, it was a tremendous learning experience. I learned a lot about the psychology of working with others and what does, and does not, work in terms of motivating colleagues and teams.”

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Five Fabulous Things to Blow Your Bonus On

So it may not have been the best year for women in finance, or even the best year for finance professionals in general. Still, for those of you who work at top performing places like Goldman Sachs or hedge funds that shorted subprime loans this year, Santa might still be squeezing down the chimney for you at bonus time. But the holidays are over, and now, if you have some money to burn, might as well spend it on yourself. Drowning your sorrows in retail therapy? We can help with that too.

Here at the Glass Hammer, we present five fabulous symbols of conspicuous consumption to help liberate your bank accounts of that bonus …

  1. blackdiamondbirkin.jpg Crocodile Birkin Bag by Hermès. This bag is the ultimate luxury indulgence. While some coveted models have a waitlist as long as six years, other models can be found on shorter notice. While this diamond-encrusted 40 cm black crocodile patent Birkin will set you back a cool $65,000, it will certainly announce to the world that you have arrived. Less outrageous models available from $6,000. Even if you can’t afford your very own yet, you can head over to the new Hermès location right on Wall Street and ogle till your heart’s content, or at least pick up a more reasonably priced scarf. Read more
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Fifth IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference

IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, sponsored by IEEE Communications Society, is a major annual international conference organized with the objective of bringing together researchers, developers, and practitioners from academia and industry working in all areas of consumer communications and networking.

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New Futures Exchange to Compete with Chicago Mercantile Exchange

As if the financial industry hasn’t seen enough of a market shake-up in recent months, a new futures exchange is set to launch in early 2008. The exchange, backed by heavy hitters in the capital markets, will serve as a low-cost alternative in the existing futures market. The exchange will start trading U.S. Treasury futures and then move into currencies, stock indexes and wheat products.

Founders of this new venture were concerned that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, a working collaboration of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, had cornered the futures market and inflated prices. To bring competition to the futures industry, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank have formed an alliance to spawn this yet unnamed futures exchange.

Other investors in this exchange include the online company e-Speed, which will provide electronic trading platforms and three Chicago based trading firms: Peak 6, Getco and the hedge fund giant Citadel.

Robert Hamada, a former Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) director, recently spoke with the Chicago Tribune about the new exchange. He said that the founders of the new futures exchange wanted to prohibit the CME Group from becoming a “monolithic monopolist.”

“What keeps prices down is the potential for competition,” Hamada explained.

While many believe the industry needs this competition to thrive, others see this move as a sign of a major industry overhaul.

John Lothian, a futures broker, reminded investors of Cantor Fitzgerald’s attempt at forming an exchange in 1999 and of BrokerTech, a combined effort by investment banks in 2001. Both failed as competitors but did prove successful as change agents.

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Ring in the Russian New Year at a Vodka Tasting

Celebrate the Russian New Year by catching up with friends and networking new contacts at the Financial Women’s Association vodka tasting.

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How To Get a Big Year-End Bonus…In Case You Haven’t Prepared in Advance

Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine

In the ideal world, you would use January to reflect on goals accomplished and to set the stage for next year’s performance review and bonus discussion. However, if it’s January and you haven’t prepared for this year’s bonus talk yet, then you need to focus on last-minute moves:

  1. Find out exactly what bonus decisions have already been made
    Are the final bonus figures still being calculated or are the checks already in payroll? If your company’s culture is open to this type of inquiry, ask your manager when the bonuses are determined and where your group is within the process. Aside from your manager, experienced colleagues or your mentor may know this information. Where you are in the bonus decision cycle impacts what you can negotiate for. If your department has just received the allotment for its group, then lobby away. If the checks are already cut, then you have to accept that the die is already case and start setting the stage for next year.
  2. Find out how the company is doing overall
    Is the company having a banner year or have targets been missed? Read those company status memos that you may have tossed aside. Read the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, press releases and industry news analyses. Even if you are a star individually, the total company pool impacts your share and more importantly impacts how you should ask for your share. Being aggressive during a down year may rub people the wrong way. Definitely ask for what you deserve but temper your style based on the company mood. If it’s a big profit year, then you should feel more confident to ask away. Read more
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Harvard Business School Profiles: Lina’s Private to Public Transition

Contributed by Lauren Davis

2060325146_a15732ba16_m.jpg Lina is a bit of an anomaly among first year MBA students at Harvard Business School (HBS).

Attending Harvard on an academic fellowship, Lina already has a summer position lined up with a prestigious investment bank. So, while her classmates are scurrying to presentations and networking events for summer employment, she is thinking farther ahead about her long term employment prospects. “It’s tempting to think the decision is still two years off,” she says, “but I know I have to start making some decisions now.”

Lina worked in finance for several years after college, taking a position in New York at one of the largest global investment banks. Her decision to pursue a private sector finance job surprised her friends and family, who knew she aspired to work in public service and give back to the community in her native Jamaica. When she visited her home country over vacation, she endured some teasing about selling out and becoming “part of the system.” She admits that she had a hard time coming to terms with her decision, saying, “It took about a year for me to stop apologizing for myself.”

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Top Female CEOs of 2007

2007 might not have been a good year for the market overall, but there is some good news. This past year, Fortune 500 companies with a female CEO at the helm did better than ever.

A recent story by Del Jones of USA Today, entitled “Female CEOs Make More Gains in 2007,” analyzed financial performance data from Fortune 500 companies in 2007 and concluded with some encouraging news for women in business. First, women-led companies increased from 9 to a record high of 12 this past year, making up 2.4% of the Fortune 500. That might not seem like enough, but the better these women perform, the more they will lay the groundwork for future female CEOs.

There’s more good news. For the second year in a row, stock performance of female-led companies at least mirrored that of companies led by men. While women also lead many medium and small businesses in the United States and abroad, this study focused only on the largest public companies. However, these highly visible companies set the trends in business that investors and entrepreneurs take note of, and so the performance of these female CEOs is carefully monitored by industry observers.

The Glass Hammer would like to recognize the top six highest performing female CEOs on 2007, calculated according to the methodology of the USA Today study, which measured the overall stock price gain of female-run Fortune 500 companies.

  1. Patricia Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland. ADM stock climbed 45% in 2007 with Ms. Woertz at the helm, making her company the top performing female-led company in the Fortune 500. Appointed to run the $36 billion agribusiness conglomerate in 2006, Ms. Woertz used her background in the petroleum industry to make the company a leader in alterative energy by transforming organic material into ethanol fuel and biodiesel. Way to go green and make green!
  2. Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo. Pepsi stock rose 21% in 2007, under Ms. Nooyi’s leadership. Appointed as CEO of the soft-drink giant in 2006, Ms. Nooyi was CFO and President at Pepsi before reaching the top job. Ms. Nooyi was responsible for the company’s $108 billion stock market valuation as well as implementing a company wide diversity initiative that is looked to as a model by many other large companies.
  3. Andrea Jung, Avon Products. Avon stock climbed 20% in 2007, with Ms. Jung as CEO. Appointed CEO in 1999 and Chairman in 2001, Ms. Jung helped the global beauty company generate over $9 billion in revenue last year. In addition to developing new growth strategies and brand initiative, Ms. Jung is responsible for increasing Avon’s charitable work with breast cancer research and providing opportunities for women in developing countries.
  4. Meg Whitman, Ebay. Ms. Whitman became head of this online auction company in 1998, but it did not grow large enough to be a part of the Fortune 500 until 2005. Still, since going public in 1998, the company’s stock has risen 1,549%, making Ms. Whitman the all time career leader among female CEOs, as measured by the performance of their company’s stock. Beating back competition from Yahoo! And Amazon and trying to aggressively weed out fakes has been a recipe for success for Ms. Whitman, whose personal holdings in the company are valued at over $1.6 billion.
  5. Christina Gold, Western Union. Under Ms. Gold’s leadership, Western Union’s stock was up 8% in 2007. She became CEO in 2006 after Western Union was spun off from First Data. As the head of the $4 billion money transfer, bill pay and prepaid services company, she has helped to expand the company, which now provides services in over 200 countries and territories.

Congratulations to these high-performing female CEOs in 2007. In a bad year for many companies, these women proved that they have the experience, wisdom and insight to grow and improve their companies and increase stock prices, even in an uncertain economy. We look forward to hearing about the next generation of female CEOs following in their footsteps.

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The Black & White Soiree and The Power of One

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Every year, I host a traditional holiday party called the Black and White Soiree. It’s a gathering of about 60 friends in my small vintage apartment. My friends Alanna and Megan help with the cooking because, as my mother would say, I am domestically challenged. I managed to make cookies but I told people they were for only decoration. They didn’t look edible although they managed to disappear, along with the other hors d’oeuvres.

Each year at the party, we raise money for a different charity. This year, we asked our guests to make an optional donation to breast cancer research. In honor of our charity, Megan found light pink M&Ms that I put out in crystal cocktail glasses. Then we also served Oreos, marshmallows and Hershey kisses to follow the theme. It was a classy affair made even fancier by the dress code. I requested black and/or white attire, no jeans.

The party took place on Saturday, December 15th, and Chicago had a horrible snowstorm that night. I remember looking out the window around 3 p.m. wondering if anyone would show up because of the weather. In the end though, I was impressed with the turn out. Inside we stood in my warm orange-spiced kitchen while a blizzard spun snow around us. I kept the keg on the porch so we never forgot how nice it was to be indoors. The room was filled with the scent of cloves and wine.

Most people drank sangria, except for those who braved the cold to get a beer from outside. We all raised our glasses and toasted to recent engagements, promotions and babies on the way. Our black and white outfits were decorated with light pink ribbons in the name of breast cancer research.

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New Year’s Resolution: Five Tips for Getting Out of Debt

229764922_5b1e7aa4fa_m.jpgSome of us woke up on New Year’s Day with a headache from drinking too much champagne the night before. But others woke up with a hangover of a different kind: a financial hangover. For some reasons that might not be immediately apparent to you, despite earning a high salary at your job in finance or law, you are still not able to live debt free. The recent hits to the stock market, layoffs at many financial services firms and paltry bonuses spinning off from the subprime crisis in the later half of 2007 don’t make this situation any better. In fact, if you are like many women you know, the double whammy of economic woes and holiday shopping splurges may have finally sent you into crisis mode.

Good. That means you are ready to do something about your debt problem. Earning a high salary is a great opportunity to gain financial security as a relatively young person, but its not the whole story. You need to take control of not only how much you earn, but how much you spend as well, and be willing to make the hard choices in terms of cutting back on expenses and luxury items in order to get a handle on your debt issues. Here, The Glass Hammer helps you get a jump-start on your New Year’s resolution with five tips to help you become debt free in 2008.

  1. Make a budget – and stick to it.
    Come home early one night and put those Excel skills to work at home. The first step in making a budget, scary as it is, requires taking stock of the actual amount of money you spend in a given month. To do this, save all your receipts for a month – restaurant meals, bar tabs, cab rides, beauty treatments, impulse shopping trips, and especially ATM withdrawals. The true dollar amount might shock you into submission, but it is important to have an accurate idea of your “expenses.” Then, make a list of all of the expenses that you anticipate on a monthly basis going forward – rent, utilities, food, credit card bills, entertainment, transportation, etc. Write these down in an Excel spread sheet that has two columns for each month – “Actual” and “Expected.” The idea is to work towards making numbers converge. Read more
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